When robot overlords rule the ‘verse in 3587, fighting over precious resources, the Awesomenauts mercenaries are brought in to stir the pot. Awesomenauts, the game, is a stellar arcade title brings team-based combat (MOBA-style) to old-school-inspired side scrolling environments. The game is styled with a sweet 80’s Saturday morning cartoon vibe, and if that doesn’t pique your interest then you need to listen to this:
And I’ll do you a favor right now and provide a link to the full song here !
Right, so you command your Awesomenaut in a team-based battle arena. You goal is to attack the enemies base and destroy their turrets and reactors. During the match you and your team collect currency (Solar) by killing enemies, that is used to add additional abilities to your character and upgrade said abilities. The game supports both local and online multiplayer, including games with bots. Outside of the matches you maintain your own player profile, where gaining experience unlocks new characters and maps.
There are a number of characters available to take into combat each with their own unique fighting style, strengths, and weaknesses. For example, I have taken a particular liking to Leon Chameleon, a ninja-type character who uses melee attacks and misdirection to conquer opponents. There are also gunslingers, tanks, casters, and a monkey with a jetpack. Yep. Monkey… with a Jetpack! And while we’re on the subject there are some pretty hilarious backstories written for these characters on Romino Game’s Awesomenauts website.
Nerd Appropriate
Honestly, there is enough material here that this could honestly be a Saturday Morning cartoon series, and that’s the type of polish you want in your game experiences. You can tell the team had a lot of fun making this game, along with the characters, art, and the amazing theme by Sonic Picnic. I tried my hand at a couple of matches online and found my novice skills to be more than serviceable in the match. Better yet, I didn’t get a sense of this game carrying the tournament baggage of other MOBA games. Win, lose, or draw, this game is all about fun.
Awesomenauts continues to get better
It’s also good to hear this game is not one and done. Rather, the Netherlands based team is hard at work on balancing the game and making tweaks to abilities based on player feed back. The company recently released the following concerning the upcoming patch:
In the meantime in the Ronimo office we have also been playing Awesomenauts a lot. But we were playing the new build, finalizing new balance tweaks and characters. A few things that will change in the balance patch: Leon’s slow upgrades & tongue, Voltar’s drones & healing, Yuri’s timebubble and Froggy G’s whirlwind shield. Apart from tweaking existing values, we will also be replacing a couple of upgrades.
With a variety of maps, characters and upgrades, this game is a perfect party title and a stylish battle experience. Awesomenauts is 800 MS and appears to be available for free to PlayStation Plus subscribers during the month of May (act fast!).
Happy Gaming.
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I’m always on the look out for good co-op games to play with the lady. This one looked cool. I’ll have to give it a try. Did you try and the multiplayer at all? Is it a split screen setup or does it just try and contain you to one screen?
I didn’t try, but check out the screens here and on their site. I believe there is split screen, and both on and offline you can play against bots. There’s a demo on XBLA as well
So we tried out the demo with 3 people. It goes to a 4 panel split screen…not too bad if you have a nice sized TV. But it took me a while to really understand the game play. Playing vs the Computer I felt like they leveled so quickly and we got completely dominated on the first match. On the second game it started to click that it was a race to level and buy power ups as soon as humanly possible otherwise you’d get overrun. It was fun and different…not sure I love it but I might pick it up…for 800 points it seemed like it could be pretty entertaining.